Masters Winner Trends: What the Last 25 Augusta National Champs Tell Us About 2026
I looked at the last 25* Masters winners, seeking trends that might actually matter for eventual winners at Augusta National.
If you have bet on golf or followed the Masters Tournament for, well, really any time at all, you’ve probably heard of a few key trends that seem to matter for eventual winners.
We haven’t had a debutant winner since 1979. The last X winners had won in the same calendar year before earning the green jacket. Those types of things.
Do they hold up? Usually, yeah, until they don’t matter and we get an outlier winner.
But Augusta doesn’t often crown an undeserving champion, and there are some common data points that eventual champions generally share.
So, I gathered some data on the last 25* Masters champions to see what they (mostly) had in common.
*I excluded the 2020 Masters, played in November and won by Dustin Johnson because it doesn’t follow the same January-to-April schedule that the others do.
Check out my full Masters breakdown here:
📊 Long-Term Skill: World Ranking Leading Into The Masters
The OWGR isn’t flawless, but it’s a very good proxy for long-term, tour-sensitive performance.
When we see how important it’s been for eventual Masters champions, it’s hard to argue against it.
Each of the last 25 April Masters champions was top-70 in the OWGR leading into their win.
That might sound high and allow for plenty of variance, and that’s a real problem with threshold analysis. Do you cut things off at the lowest end? Or do you try to weed out outliers?
(We’ll do a bit of both.)
But 23 of the last 25 champs were top-30 by the OWGR. That’s 92.0%. The two outliers were Angel Cabrera (69th in 2009) and Zach Johnson (56th in 2007), so it’s been well over 15 years since we’ve seen a “long shot” winner by OWGR.
Soft Cutoff: Top-70 by OWGR
Hard Cutoff: Top-30 by OWGR
🗓️ Definitely Not a Debutant: Masters History
Given that we haven’t had an Augusta National debutant win outright since 1979, it stands to reason that each of these 25 winners had a start at Augusta before winning.
Three of them had just a single start (Willett in 2016, Spieth in 2015, and Schwartzel in 2011). So, 22 of the last 25 champs had at least two Augusta starts, and 20 of them had at least three starts at Augusta.
Beyond that, 22 of the 25 champs in the data set had a top-25 at Augusta prior to winning, including Spieth, who had just one prior start.
So, only two of the last 25 champs were in their second start and didn’t have a prior top-25 finish at Augusta.
Soft Cutoff: 1+ Masters Start
Hard Cutoff: 3+ Masters Starts or 1+ Masters Top-25
🏛️ Major Reps: Major History
It’s not just Augusta that is showing a signal with future winners when it comes to majors. Total major performance can tell us a thing or two, as well.
All 25 champs had at least eight major starts before winning at Augusta. Although Spieth, for example, had just a single start at Augusta before winning in 2015, he had made his major debut at the 2012 U.S. Open. His 2015 Masters win was his ninth career major start.
Scottie Scheffler’s 2022 win came in his 10th career start.
In total, 23 of the last 25 winners had at least 11 starts, and 21 of them (84.0%) had at least 15 major starts.
Beyond that, all 25 had at least one top-25 finish at a major, and 23 of the 25 had a prior top-10 finish at a major before winning.
Soft Cutoff: 8+ Major Starts and 1+ Top-25 at a Major
Hard Cutoff: 10+ Major Starts and 1+ Top-10 at a Major
📈 Current Form: Wins and Finishes Before The Masters
Of the past 25 Masters champs, 15 of them won a tournament between January 1st and their win (60.0%), including the last four champions.
However, that followed a stretch of three straight April winners (Patrick Reed, Tiger Woods, and Hideki Matsuyama in 2018, 2019, and 2021, respectively) who had not won before their Masters victories.
The four winners before that trio (Sergio Garcia, Danny Willett, Jordan Spieth, and Bubba Watson) each had a win. But Adam Scott and Bubba Watson were winless in 2013 and 2012, respectively, before winning at Augusta. In fact, only Charl Schwartzel in 2011 had a pre-Masters win from 2007 to 2013 among eventual winners.
So, there are basically streaks to the “already won this year” narrative. That’s the takeaway.
Wins are binary — and hard to come by. What if we loosen that up a bit?
In total, 23 of the past 25 April winners had either a win or a top-10 to their name before the Masters. All 25 had a top-25 finish. The group averaged 5.0 top-25s leading in. Whew.
Soft Cutoff: 1+ Top-25 Finish Since January 1st
Hard Cutoff: 2+ Top-25 Finishes Since January 1st
🔢 Recent Data: Strokes Gained Leading In
There’s no strokes gained data before 2003, and a few champs didn’t qualify for strokes gained data on the PGA Tour leading into the Masters (Angel Cabrera in 2009, Adam Scott in 2013, and Danny Willett in 2016).
That leaves 18 green jacket winners with SG data in our sample. Of those 18, six were leading the PGA Tour in strokes gained entering Augusta, and 11 were inside the top 10. There were 16 inside the top 30 and 17 inside the top 50.
The outlier was Trevor Immelman (134th), who is one of the few statistical outliers in the dataset.
To put a number on it, 16 of the 18 winners with data were averaging at least 1.00 strokes gained per round for that season, leading into the Masters.
Further, 12 of the 18 were top-10 in strokes gained: tee to green, and 17 were 52nd or better in SG: T2G. Only six were inside the top 30 in putting leading in, just as many as those outside the top 95 for the season.
Soft Cutoff: 1.00+ Strokes Gained: Total per Round This Year
Hard Cutoff: 1.00+ Strokes Gained: Tee to Green per Round This Year
🟡 Trendsetters: Soft Cutoffs
Understandably, the soft cutoff will leave a lot more names on the board. Here are the golfers who meet the following cutoffs:
Top-70 by OWGR
1+ Masters Start
8+ Major Starts
1+ Top-25 at a Major
1+ Top-25 Finish Since January 1st
1.00 Strokes Gained per Round This Year (via datagolf)
Scottie Scheffler (1)
Rory McIlroy (2)
Cameron Young (3)
Tommy Fleetwood (4)
Matt Fitzpatrick (6)
Collin Morikawa (7)
Robert MacIntyre (8)
Justin Rose (9)
Xander Schauffele (10)
Russell Henley (12)
Hideki Matsuyama (14)
Ludvig Aberg (17)
Alex Noren (19)
Harris English (20)
Akshay Bhatia (21)
Viktor Hovland (22)
Patrick Reed (23)
Bryson DeChambeau (24)
Min Woo Lee (25)
Maverick McNealy (27)
Si Woo Kim (28)
Jon Rahm (30)
Shane Lowry (32)
Sam Burns (33)
Patrick Cantlay (35)
Nicolai Hojgaard (36)
Jason Day (41)
Adam Scott (53)
Jordan Spieth (61)
Nick Taylor (67)
🟢 Trendsetters: Hard Cutoffs
Let’s get a bit stingier. These are the golfers who meet these criteria:
Top-30 by OWGR
3+ Masters Starts or 1+ Masters Top-25
10+ Major Starts
1+ Top-10 at a Major
2+ Top-25 Finishes Since January 1st
1.00 Strokes Gained: Tee to Green per Round This Year (via datagolf)
Scottie Scheffler (1)
Rory McIlroy (2)
Cameron Young (3)
Tommy Fleetwood (4)
J.J. Spaun (5)
Matt Fitzpatrick (6)
Collin Morikawa (7)
Xander Schauffele (10)
Russell Henley (12)
Sepp Straka (13)
Hideki Matsuyama (14)
Viktor Hovland (22)
Patrick Reed (23)
Bryson DeChambeau (24)
Min Woo Lee (25)
Si Woo Kim (28)
Jon Rahm (30)